


All I Ask

by klassmartin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, Post Season 1, Pre Season 2, Unresolved Romantic Tension, fitzsimmons are brave enough to sacrifice their lives but not to admit their goddamn feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9370550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klassmartin/pseuds/klassmartin
Summary: Jemma spends her last night before going undercover with the man she so desperately wants to heal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AKA Reasons I shouldn't be allowed to listen to Adele so early in the morning.
> 
> A rambly, unbeta'd mess that struck me in my car after a weekend of bingeing the first half of Season 1.

_ No one knows me like you do _

_ And since you're the only one that matters _

_ Tell me who do I run to? _

\- All I Ask, Adele

* * *

 

Though Jemma isn’t sure how long she’s been standing at the door of her best friend, she does know she might just spend forever being there. It seems silly, since she’s waltzed through various versions of Fitz’s door more times than she could possibly count, wielding science experiments or jokes or food for a long night of studying. It was inside Fitz’s room at the Academy that they first drew up the blueprints for what would become the D.W.A.R.F.S. It’s where they got so deep into a Doctor Who marathon that they failed to set an alarm and woke up fifteen minutes before they were expected to begin drills with their supervising officer. Fitz’s room is where she listened to him whisper about what happened to his father, and where she recounted stories of how very lonely it is to grow up in a place that couldn’t understand her mind.

This should be as easy as breathing for her, except she can’t seem to find the courage to raise her _bloody hand and knock._

This time is different. This time _matters_. This time may very well be the last.

There is a cough, jolting Jemma from her thoughts, and she turns to find Coulson at the end of the corridor. His smile is forced and weak, and in a flurry of embarrassment, Jemma near-falls through the door without a second of warning.

“Oh!” Jemma feels her face heat up to the tip of her ears, gaze immediately falling on her startled friend.

“S-Sim-“ Fitz cringes, smoothing the sheets over his lap as he straightens up in his bed. “Si- _Jemma_. Wh-what are you -“

“I wanted to…” Jemma presses her lips into a grim line. With all her intentions to see Fitz tonight, at no point had the idea of what she was actually going to say to him crossed her mind. “How are you?”

His hands are shaking. It's the first thing she notices about him these days, gives her an indication of how he is managing at any particular moment. Fitz’s hands are the only thing she can look at most of the time; she’s too scared to look into his eyes, knowing what she will find when she does. It’s ridiculous really, since she spent nine days at his bed side, praying to anyone and wishing on anything that she would get to see them again.

“I- Fine.” Fitz is fidgeting with the edge of his sheet, and she can see his toes twitching underneath. His nails have dirt under them, something so unlike _her_ Fitz that it makes hot tears swell in the back of her throat.

The silence is uncomfortable. Jemma didn’t even know her and Fitz were capable of such a thing until they were rescued from the middle of the ocean.

Someone clears their throat, she’s not sure who, and Fitz nods to his desk chair at the same moment she asks, “Can I sit down?”

It’s a hint of the bond they used to share; having the same thought at the same moment. Jemma attempts a smile, but Fitz just stares at his hands.

She has no idea what to say. Jemma has lived her life learning and understanding and explaining science; she is methodical and practical and is the smartest person in nearly every room. Knowledge, science, facts; these are things she can easily comprehend. The tangle of knots and frayed nerves in her stomach, the razor sharp edges of emotions too profound to decipher… That is something she can’t cope with. How can she put into words something she can’t even understand? No string of words, no matter how complex or meaningful, can summarise what she wants to tell him.

Jemma sits, but not on the chair. Every ounce of courage she has, she puts into the six steps it takes to get to the edge of his bed. And then, she sits.

“Jemma.” It’s the first word she’s heard him say since the coma that slides right off his tongue. There’s no hesitance, no stutter. Her name has never sounded so beautiful, so serene, not since the moment he said her name the first time they met.

_ “Hello, I’m Jemma Simmons, nice to meet you.” _

_ “Jemma Simmons, huh? I’m Fitz.” _

“So I’m leaving in the morning.” He knows; she’s been trying to prepare him for a while now. But the look of surprise that flashes across his face makes her wonder if he’s been listening.

“L-Leave? Leaving?”

“England. I- It’s my mother’s birthday in a few days. I’m visiting.”

Lies have never come easy to Jemma, but she’s repeated this lie so often in the mirror that it comes out without a second thought.

“You -“ Fitz swallows; she hears the struggle in the back of his throat as his brain tries to remember how to form the syllables. “Home. Y-You’re going. Home.”

“Yes.”

It’s such a simple word, but it makes her feel so much that for half a second, she forgets. Everything that has happened; the year of heartache and too many close calls, the laughter and the tears, the conversation at the bottom of the ocean. She forgets just long enough to look up and see his face.

A squeak escapes her. A remarkable amount of effort goes into keeping the flood of tears at bay, but a solitary tear slips down her cheek. There is so much pain in his expression, so much she can’t possibly pinpoint, that her tattered heart somehow breaks a little more.

“Oh Fitz,” she pleads quietly. “Please…”

Is this the last conversation they will have?

“Please. I just want…”

Is this the last night they will be share?

“Fitz. Would you please look at me?”

Is this the last time she will say his name?

Jemma has known him long enough to know that Fitz can do many amazing, extraordinary things, but one thing he can’t do is deny her.

Their eyes meet. It’s a moment that stretches on, where she hopes more than anything in the world he can see everything she needs him to know. She wants him to know how impossible this is for her, how excruciating the idea of leaving him is. She’s all too aware that people can survive losing a limb, which is why she thinks it’s silly that people describe scenarios like this in such a fashion. Leaving Fitz is like taking something integral to her very being and ripping it out; her lungs, her brain, her heart. It’s so inconceivable that she almost laughs. How is she supposed to walk away from someone like that?

Fitz frowns, tearing his gaze away. It reminds her of the reason she is doing this; she is trying to save him. She has spent weeks trying to be everything he needs, trying to prove that the person he sacrificed himself for is somehow, impossibly worth it. Jemma wants to be to him what he is to her. Because Fitz is everything, and somewhere in that handful of seconds between Fitz hitting that button and Jemma screaming and the rush of water that burned her eyes and drowned her lungs and tried to take Fitz away from her grasp, she realised, with acute clarity, that he was capable of death. Jemma had been terrified for his life more times than she can stand, but in that moment, she was terrified for his death.

She is leaving, there is no way to back out or pretend otherwise. Jemma is leaving behind her team, her family, who are trying to heal and move on from the damage Hydra and Ward and Garrett left in their wake. She is leaving Fitz, her most favourite person in the world, someone so profound to her she can't find a word worthy of summing it up. And in the aftermath of this decision, she understands that a terrifying question is about to be answered. 

Who is Jemma Simmons without Leopold Fitz?

(There is no Simmons without Fitz. She would not exist without him.)

A deep breath. “I know that things right now aren’t easy -“ Fitz scoffs. “But… For a while, even if it’s only a moment, can we just…”

She doesn’t think she can go knowing this is how they left things. She’s been trying so hard - too hard, she can see now - to be what he needs. But Fitz does not want her. Jemma is trying to fix him, but all she seems capable of doing is breaking him further.

Perhaps Fitz realises this is bigger than she is pretending it is. Maybe the old Fitz takes over. Or, just possibly, he knows without words. Their bond, stretched and threadbare and at risk of tearing, allows him to see a glimpse into the inner workings of her mind.

“Jemma, come here.” And he moves, shuffling across his bed and flickering his eyes to the empty space beside him. Immediately, Jemma rearranges herself, toeing off her shoes and tucking her toes under his sheets, knees to her chest. There is a beat of silence, and then he speaks again.

“Tell her - your mum - hap… Happy…”

“Of course.”

They have never needed words to fully communicate, despite their love of them. Now, she sees how her words frustrate him, how she keeps doing things wrong even though all she’s trying to do is help. She wonders why the two of them feel so incomprehensibly broken.

At a loss, Jemma moves to lie down, counting imperfections on the ceiling. She’s so _tired_ of all of this, of trying this hard. They were supposed to be effortless.

“Jemma… What - What are you doing?”

She ignores his question. She wants him to _know_.

She reaches 138 before Fitz sighs and joins her, is restless for another 17 before he settles. Somewhere between her entering the room and now, his hands have stopped shaking. One is tucked behind his head, the other perches over his heart, fingers tapping out a quick, nervous beat. His eyes are closed, the near-permanent wrinkle between his brows smoothing out, and something peaceful settles over them.

She hesitates, and rolls.

Instantly his muscles seize, but she forces herself to persist, head resting against his shoulder, arm slung over him in a way that she’d almost call careless were it not so intentional. If this is her last night with him, she needs something good, something to hold onto that will remind her that everything she’s about to put herself through will be worth it in the end, if it saves him.

Little by little, Fitz relaxes beneath her, and moves the hand behind his head to curl around her shoulders. She smiles with the victory.

This is what she needs. A memory that will keep her alive; fighting.

“Jem -“

“Fitz, please. Just… Let’s not speak.”

In response, he squeezes her arm, fingers blazing a lazy heat across her skin. His breath ruffles her hair, his heart rate evens out, and Jemma finally remembers what it’s like be home.

* * *

 

It’s 3am. Fitz has been asleep for several hours, chest rising and falling steadily beneath her cheek. On many occasions it’s almost eased her into sleep, but the feel of his lungs expanding, the sound of his heartbeat, the heat in his touch against her bare arm, is enough to keep her awake. Every second she meticulously saves, sealing it into a box in her mind for when she needs to remember why she has volunteered to go undercover with the very organisation that tried to kill her and everyone she loves. Doing this without Fitz next to her seems impossible, but she knows it is something she has to do alone. Isolation in return for his survival. A mission without him so he can have a life at all. But this time now, this she will treasure, she knows, because it’s perhaps the closest she will get to telling him the truth that pounds inside her chest.

“There’s something I need to you to know,” she whispers into his neck, tears leaking into his sleeve, “But I can’t find the courage to tell you, so please, let me show you.”

With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Jemma slips out of his arms, biting her lip so hard it begins to bleed in a vain attempt to keep her sobs silent. These past few hours have been her farewell; if he wakes up, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to do what she needs to do. She definitely won’t be able to say goodbye.

Jemma pauses at the door, taking one last look at the incredible man who willingly offered his life to keep her alive. No matter what, she will never be able to repay him for that, but just maybe, her next move will be enough to let him heal.

* * *

 

It’s cold when Fitz wakes up that morning. Instantly, he feels wrong, feels off kilter, though it takes longer to realise why - Jemma is no longer beside him. The space beside him is cold, any trace of her ever being there gone. Fitz clambers out of bed, rushing to the door and across the hall to her room.

Maybe he can find her. Maybe he can tell her… Something. _Anything_.

When Fitz knocks, the door creaks open. The room is exactly what he expects, everything in its rightful place, immaculately tidy and organised. But something is wrong, and he can’t figure it out, cursing his broken brain for not seeing what is probably so obvious -

The desk.

There’s two items stacked in the middle of the wooden top. One, a manila file filled with various papers, is labelled Fitz’s Treatment Plan. Inside, he finds a wide variety of articles on hypoxia, Jemma’s neat handwriting covering all the available space with detailed notes and queries. There’s details on experimental trials that show some promise, lists of drugs and therapies to try. Everything someone would need to be able to treat him, categorised and colour coded for their benefit.

And the other, sealed in a thick cream envelope, is a letter addressed to him.

When Fitz’s hands shake opening it, it’s not due to the brain damage.

_ Fitz, _

_ You’ve done far too much for me throughout our friendship, and I hope you know how eternally grateful I am for it all. Which is why asking you to do more for me makes me feel so selfish. _

_ But please, Fitz, please be safe. Stay alive and continue to be the amazing man I have had the utmost privilege of working beside since I was seventeen. Change the world. Save the world. Be everything I know you can be. _

_ I’m so very sorry. _

_ Yours eternally, _

_ Jemma _  
  



End file.
